Selectmen Approve $29,000 Contract for Granite Curbing in Expanded Parking Area at Waveny

Town officials this week approved a $29,000 contract with a Mount Airy, N.C.-based company for granite curbing that will be installed in an expanded parking area overlooking new athletic fields at New Canaan High School.

The Board of Selectmen voted 3-0 in favor of the $29,409.86 contract with North Carolina Granite Company during its regular meeting Tuesday.

Conceived more than two years ago, the parking will expand into the area formerly occupied by the smaller water tower at Waveny that recently came down. 

It should be completed in the spring, Public Works Director Tiger Mann told the selectmen during the meeting, held via videoconference.

“Plans call for granite curbing to outline the parking area and then the traffic islands, or the islands that are inside interior to it,” Mann said. “We find that if we utilize blacktop curbing it tends to have plow damage and requires maintenance over time. This also kind of allows us to standardize the parking lot, whereby over at Lapham Community Center we’ve got curbing or Belgian block curbing around the islands and around Lapham itself. Over at Irwin, we use granite as well. The entire high school is done with concrete curbing that has a square profile but concrete curbing tends to chip and fracture and degrade over time, whereas the granite will last a lifetime.”

First Selectman Kevin Moynihan and Selectmen Kathleen Corbet and Nick Williams voted in favor of the contract. 

The parking lot is expected to serve the water tower turf fields at NCHS as well as an adjacent softball field. The lot itself will add about 75 new spots, officials have said, and will adjoin the newly installed access road connecting the parking area to the southernmost lot of the high school.

The selectman asked how the cost of asphalt curbing compares (less upfront but far more in long-term maintenance and replacement), when the parking lot project will be completed (spring) and whether there are just two companies New Canaan goes to for such work (they’re the most competitive, others are re-distributors).

Williams asked whether the granite curbing aesthetically is better than asphalt. 

Mann said yes in terms of its overall look and feel.

“We have a $6 million turf field complex next to it, it would be nice to have something commensurate,” he said. “It’s just a parking lot but it definitely dresses up the area.”